Keeping it simple

Getting creative with look up windows in Solomon

How you enter a name in the vendor or customer maintenance screens can improve finding last names. The trick is to remember to embed the symbol '@' in front of the last name. For instance if you are entering 1099 vendors in a vendor maintenance screen and you want these names to be displayed by last name first on the vendor listings, then you would enter them as: Firstname @LastName . For instance:

A second trick is to enter the as First Name ~LastName, using the tilde sign. This will cause the name to be flipped in Solomon so that the name is displayed for the saved record as Lastname @FirstName

But when the record is saved, it flips:

Most of our customers have forgotten the trick for the '~' flip option. Try it out and see which method work for you for finding personal names in the PV (Possible Value) look up fields when you hit F3.

Enjoy these keyboard tricks with your Solomon software.

Regards,

Jeff Cozens

Tricking Solomon to display forms

With many of us using remote support more and more, we are found a simple solution to viewing the pesky "forms" when you are remotely attached to a computer. In the Dynamics SL product, when we are printing forms (i.e. AR statements, 1099 forms, AP checks) it can be a challenge because in the printing process we have no ability to print these forms in a preview format, (view on screen). It is impossible to see the printed form without asking for help from your remote client to fax or email a scanned copy of the printed document.

A simple workaround is that you can choose the printer output button on these forms and re direct the form to be printed to file. The next screen in the export to file setup process, which is attained by clicking of the setup printer button, allows you to assign a file name and to assign a file type. I usually choose the crystal pdf option which renders as excellent reproduction of the printed document. Granted I need to go find the printed document but can be displayed on the screen once the pdf is launched.

This tip can be helpful to end users also. Let's say you a want to send a copy of these forms to your accountant or your boss. The saved file can be attached to an email which makes this task a breeze to handle completely at your desk. I'm sure you can think of many other little uses of this trick of printing forms to file which can increase your personal productivity.

Remember increasing your personal productivity makes you more valuable to your boss or your clients.

Jeff Cozens

 

 

 

 

Market growth info for Solomon and Navision

It is often difficult to get an understanding of the growth of specific products. The author interviewed a V P at Deltec software, which is a major software provider in the Government project/ professional services area, and got some interesting information. Here is a summary of the fact I found most interesting:

A recent article published in a magazine for government contractors, the "WashingtonTechnology", (Oct 30, 2008) provides an interesting analysis of the market, Microsoft's plan to go after a larger share of these businesses, and a discussion on how the Dynamics SL and NAV products match the needs of this industry. A representative from Deltek, the largest software vendor serving this sector today, states that Dynamics SL is the closest fit to what they offer with their proprietary system.

Dynamics SL has 15,000 customers and Dynamics NAV has 65,000, (side note: most of these customers are international) she said. "Both of those solutions grew at the rate of 21 percent last year," she said, adding that it is difficult to provide specific government contractor sales figures because they are fragmented across the many Standard Industrial classification codes.

Earlier this year, Gartner Inc. placed Microsoft among its Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms. The analysis firm said that although Microsoft was late to join the business intelligence platforms market and is still catching up, its platform provides "infrastructure, development tools, workflow and collaboration capabilities that are held in higher regard than those of many of its competitors."

Congrats to both Sl and Nav for a great 2008 year.

 

Jeff

 

Year End Updates

If you are covered by an active support contract for your Dynamics Software, you are eligible for yearend updates for 1099 and w2 forms. Log into your Dynamics customersource web portal to download these updates or send us an email and we can get them for you. If you are using Dynamics SL Payroll, you can also download the 2009 payroll tables for Federal and State payroll deductions, such as income tax, social security etc. Processing these updates before your first accounts payable/ payroll check run; 1099 printing process or W2 process can save you some pain.

 

Also for Dynamics SL users, remember to check that the 2009 year for 1099's is one of your two open tracking years. You can check the status by going to Accounts Payable, then under processes, launch 1099 calendar control. If you still have 2007 1099 year open you will need to "purge" oldest year, to make sure that 2008 and 2009 are your active 1099 tracked years.

 

Jeff

 

 

Learning Tricks by Using Test Database

Key Symptom: The task in the Dynamics ERP software just seems to be taking too many steps.

Solution: Create a Test Database, which is a recent copy of your active database, and experiment. Over the years, with our Dynamics SL customers, we have found that most users can be creative in finding better and faster ways to do re occurring tasks in their accounting processes. Using a test company to create the new processes, to experiment, or just to train the new staff member is a great way to improve utilization.

 

PS. Over the years we are amazed how many times users have literally wanted to kick themselves when they how simple a process really was within Dynamics, when they got proper training. Maybe you too need a little "extra" training.

 

Jeff

A Budgeting we will go

I was talking with Chuck Snider, CFO at Asepco, today. Chuck was bragging because he resurrected some old notes from a training class I had given on how to create and import a budget into Dynamics SL. Chuck said the notes were dated five years ago, but he found them and they still worked. Chuck was excited because for years, literally, he had been exporting the financials to excel where he manually entered the budget each month. Now that entire actual vs. budget report is coming directly out of Dynamics SL. I have always believed that if I could only remember 1 or 2 worthwhile ideas from any training or seminar I attend, then the time was worthwhile. It was exciting to hear that one of the training tricks I gave 5 years ago, actually got implemented.

How do you keep your "good ideas" from getting lost? Have you created a place to store there "future" to be implemented ideas? Now that I think about it, I am going to create a folder on our server to be the storage place for all my "to be implemented" ideas….. I think I'll name the folder "Chuck says to do"

Regards,

Jeff Cozens

When Quickbooks has lost its Quick....

First off, I want to say Quickbooks, by Intuit, is a great product.  At its price point and feature set, it is a strong choice for new businesses or small businesses.   The challenge is when to get off this software and move on to other better suited software.   I recently spoke with a CFO of a publicly traded company who was trying to run their business on Quickbooks and do multi currency consolidation of five sets of books. There closing cycle was at best 45 days; and  way too many excel spreadsheets.  As a public company the thought of impending SOX compliance with Quickbooks was frightening, hence they were looking at their software options.

Recently it came to my attention that this software company, Wizard Productivity Systems (www.wizardx4.com) had taken the concepts of a software installation wizard and applied it to the Quickbooks user who wanted to migrate to Microsoft Dynamics GP.   This wizard migrated both static files and dynamic files from the old accounting software to the new Dynamics GP software.   In a series of English based questions, they gather information as to how you would like to run your business and translated these answers into setup setting, and processes in the GP software.  This company boasts that they can get users converted on a fixed price schedule of consulting support ( 20 to 30 hours) to get you up in running for the financials, purchasing, and sales modules. 

I guess it is makes sense to see the tools for installing software starting to show up for migrating data and doing complex implementations. 

I like the idea of automating the complex setup decisions for new accounting systems, but when I read the information on their web site, I sense that they forgot to remind people that the value of migrating off of Quickbooks was to get better flexibility and reporting.  It will still take, in my opinion, some mixture of identifying key business needs, creative thinking, training and consulting help to get to this end.   

Is there a future "wizard" in your life?